We're Jason, Beth, Lee Anna, Sawyer, and Sarah Claire, a family of five living, learning, and laughing lots in Northern Africa. We hope you can learn a little (and maybe laugh a little too) as you read about our latest adventures.

Monday, December 01, 2008

Playing Catch Up

I realize I've been a bit slow in my blog posting over the past month, so I'm going to try to do some catching up this week. My goal is to post every day, so check back often to see what we've been doing over the last few weeks. First up...our international children!

Our kids' daycare always observes International Children's Day in November. They send home notes telling the parents to dress their kids in clothes from their country and to send a dish of food native to their country.

This has been sort of a struggle for us every year. What is American native dress? It's what the kids wear every day. As far as I know, we don't really have anything like what they're picturing. The first year, when Lee Anna was two, I just sent her in jeans and a t-shirt, and teachers pitched a fit, saying, "Why didn't you tell us she didn't have an outfit? We would have gotten her one!"

So, last year, I decided that since I didn't have a pilgrim costume for her, we would just go with good ol' stars and stripes. Sawyer's outfit, however, was a bit more eclectic. We decided that since he was born here, and since we had a local outfit just his size, he would wear it, but we also threw in a USA cap just for good measure. Those pics are here. Some of you may also remember that his teachers made some slight adjustments to his outfit after he got to school.

So, this year, once again, as the day approached, we started wondering what in the world their teachers are wanting when they say "American native dress." We opted for the patriotic route again (luckily the caps from last year still fit, and the shirt Lee Anna wore last year now fits Sawyer just fine). I think the denim jacket says "American" just about as well as anything could!

The "native food" part is always a little tricky, too. It has to be something I can make here (meaning ingredients are available), is not too messy (it is for preschoolers, after all), and is likely to be eaten by said preschoolers. I don't know about you, but my preschoolers are not really interested in eating strange, unknown foods from other countries (or from their own country, for that matter). So, taking all that into consideration, I decided to send a big batch of chocolate chip cookies. They are definitely not a local specialty (people have never heard of them), but they seemed to be well-received enough. The kids came home with empty containers!